by Douglas Yeo (June 4, 2026)
I am at work on several research and writing projects, including an article for the International Trumpet Guild Journal about the trumpet in ancient Egypt. Alongside that work, I continue to reflect on the trip to Egypt that my wife and I took in January of this year, and on our plans for a return trip in 2027.
One of the sites we plan to visit next year is Medinet Habu, the mortuary temple of Pharaoh Ramesses III (reigned 1187–1156 BC). Although he was not directly related to the much more famous Ramesses II (reigned 1279–1213 BC), Ramesses III is often considered the last of the great Pharaohs. Medinet Habu includes many reliefs that depict trumpets, and its decorative scheme is central to my article.
Today, while reading Aidan Dodson’s Rameses III: King of Egypt, His Life and Afterlife (Cairo: American University in Cairo, 2019), I came across this paragraph on page 83:
Since the beginning of Egyptian history, the ideal Egyptian tomb had comprised two distinct elements: an accessible offering place where the worlds of the living and the dead met, and where sustenance and prayers could be delivered as part of mortuary cult; and the actual burial place, usually subterranean, and intended to be sealed for eternity. By the time of Rameses III, the kingly implementation of this scheme comprised a memorial temple (or “mansion of millions of years”) close to the edge of the desert at Thebes West, and a subterranean tomb in a desert wadi—now known as the Valley of the Kings—beyond the curtain of cliffs that rose behind the royal memorial temples.
A “mansion of millions of years.” A million years is a long time. Millions of years is a span of time that is impossible for a human being to grasp. Still, after visiting Egypt and gaining some understanding of what made ancient Egypt and Egyptians tick—their complex religious beliefs, their art, and their system of government—I have become increasingly intrigued by the bold phrase “mansion of millions of years.”
Dodson’s book does not provide a citation for the phrase, but it is not a modern invention. It is rooted in ancient Egyptian usage.
When we were in Egypt earlier this year, I visited Chicago House, the home of the Epigraphic Survey of University of Chicago in Luxor. There, we met with Brett McClain, field director of the Survey, who has been immensely helpful to me in my research. The University of Chicago has had a presence in Egypt for over 100 years, and its work photographing and drawing the reliefs and inscriptions in dozens of Egyptian temples and monuments has been, and continues to be, vitally important to our understanding of ancient Egypt.
The cover of The Epigraphic Survey, Medinet Habu—Volume VIII, Plates 591–660. The Eastern High Gate with Translations of Texts (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1970). The University of Chicago has made its volumes of work by the Epigraphic Survey available for free online. This volume may be viewed and downloaded HERE.
In preparation for our visit to Medinet Habu in 2027, I have been reading the Epigraphic Survey’s many volumes about the temple. Dodson’s comment about the “mansion of millions of years” finds a secure ancient source in one of them (cover and link above): The Epigraphic Survey, Medinet Habu—Volume VIII, Plates 591–660. The Eastern High Gate with Translations of Texts (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1970). Plate 608 shows an epigraphic drawing of reliefs that depict “Rameses III Offering Ma’at to Ptah of Medinet Habu and Sekhmet.” The transcription of the hieroglyphic text is found on page seven. The first part of the translation reads:
Words spoken by Ptah the Great, South of (His) Wall, Lord of Ankhtowi, the great god who hears prayer, who resides in the Mansion of Millions of Years “United with Eternity” in the estate of Amon: “I have given you the lifetime of Re and the years of Atum. I have given you all health and all joy forever and eternally.”
There it is: a securely cited ancient Egyptian instance in which the Pharaoh’s temple was called “the Mansion of Millions of Years.” It was a bold claim. The ancient Egyptian Pharaohs truly thought they were gods and they would live forever. That’s why they constructed such elaborate tombs and mortuary temples—so they would have everything they needed to be transported to the afterlife and be remembered forever. Tomb robbers had something to say about that, as did the march of time and the drifting of sand.
My interest in Egypt runs deep and wide. I have written about this on TheLastTrombone—you can read about it HERE—and at this season of my life, I think, read, research, learn, and write about ancient Egypt every day. That ancient civilization is remembered for its pyramids, tombs, temples, and stunning artifacts, many of which are still present today. I am fascinated by all of this. But ancient Egypt itself—the culture, the civilization— is no longer with us. Today, Isis and Osiris, Ptah, and Sobek (and the rest of the pantheon of ancient Egyptian deities) are not worshipped as they were in ancient Egypt. World religions today generally do not include funerary traditions involving mummification. There has not been a Pharaoh for over 2000 years. But, like the Pharaohs of old, many of us also want to “live forever” in the minds and hearts of others, a sentiment born more of pride than humility.
The pyramids of the Giza Plateau, Egypt. Left to right: The “Great Pyramid” of Khufu, the pyramid of Khafre, the pyramid of Menkaure. Photo by Douglas Yeo, January 17, 2026.
And yet we are still talking about the Pharaohs today. The names of Ramesses II (“the Great”) and Tutankhamun, as well as Akhenaten, the female Pharaoh Hatshepsut, and Khufu, builder of the Great Pyramid (the last standing wonder of the ancient world), remain on the lips of schoolchildren and scholars alike. The ruins of ancient Egypt continue to be discovered and restored, although my Egyptian friend Ashraf Masoud recently told me that many Egyptologists believe 90 percent of ancient Egypt’s past has not yet been excavated. What has been found captures our imagination.
Part of this, I think, is our fascination with the rise and fall of civilizations. They grow, they thrive, they fall—as ancient Egypt did, and as the Greeks and Romans did after them. They disappear, and sometimes bits and pieces of them are rediscovered. This is the cycle of all civilizations. It will happen to our civilization, too.
In late 1817 or early 1818, the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley—his wife, Mary, was the author of Frankenstein—wrote a poem that spoke directly to this. Shelley knew of the work of the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, who was born in the first century BC. In his Bibliotheca historica (Library of History), Diodorus endeavored to narrate the history of civilization, both mythical and real, in regions around the known world. Book I is devoted to Egypt.
In Book 1 (chapters 47 and 49), Diodorus described a massive monument in Thebes, near modern Luxor, with pylons, columns, and a huge seated statue of Osymandyas. The name Osymandyas is a Greek/Hellenized form of the throne name of Pharaoh Ramesses II, Usermaatre Setepenre. Diodorus does not give the statue’s height, but he says its foot measured over seven cubits. A Greek cubit in his time was about 18 inches. Extrapolating from that measurement, scholars today conclude that the seated statue Diodorus described would have been between 56 and 62 feet high—about the height of a six-story building—and, had the figure been standing upright, it would have been over 100 feet tall.
Diodorus described the statue’s impact:
And it is not merely for its size that this work merits approbation, but it is also marvelous by reason of its artistic quality, and excellent because of the nature of the stone, since in a block of so great a size there is not a single crack or blemish to be seen.
Then he gave the statue’s famous inscription:
The inscription upon it runs: “King of Kings am I, Osymandyas. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works.”
This is a stunning statement of hubris, but we have heard words like these from many leaders over the millennia, from ancient times to today. The irony is that the massive colossus of Ramesses II in his temple, the Ramesseum—scholars believe this is the statue Diodorus described—is now a toppled ruin.
The fallen statue of Ramesses II at the Ramesseum, Thebes, Egypt. Photo by Francis Frith (1857).
Now, fast-forward eighteen centuries to get back to Percy Shelley. Born in 1792, Shelley died in 1822, a month before his thirtieth birthday. During his lifetime, England was busy building empire. Impressed by Diodorus’ account of the colossal statue of a Pharaoh, Shelley wrote a poem about the fall of the powerful that is now considered one of the greatest works of literature in the English language:
Ozymandias
by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1817)I met a Traveller from an antique land,
Who said, “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is OZYMANDIAS, King of Kings.”
Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair!
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that Colossal Wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Here is the poem as it first appeared in print (below), from the January 11, 1818 issue of the London newspaper, The Examiner. Shelley submitted it under a pseudonym, Glirastes.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias. As it first appeared in The Examiner (London), Vol. 524, January 11, 1818, page 24.
And so it goes, year after year, century after century, millennium after millennium. Kingdoms rise and kingdoms fall. Some, like ancient Egypt, have left us extraordinary ruins that cause us to pause and wonder. Others have vanished without a trace. The “mansions of millions of years” all eventually disappear. I am reminded of the words of John Ellerton who, in his great hymn written at the height of the Victorian-era British Empire, “The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, Is Ended,” stated:
So be it, Lord; Thy Throne shall never,
Like earth’s proud empires, pass away.
We all pass away. All empires pass away. Like ancient Egypt, we may remember them, study them, and learn from them, but only God remains eternal—for more than “millions of years.”
The fallen statue of Ramesses II at the Ramesseum, Thebes, Egypt. Photo by Tim Adams (2019). A cropped version of this photo appears at the top of this article.